Nissan FINALLY has a hybrid! Here’s the 2026 Nissan Rogue PHEV
It’s possible Nissan’s last hybrid offered here in the United States was the Morano hybrid. That was just a oneanddone thing. 2016 model year, it had a 2 and 1/2 L supercharged engine, made it to an electric motor. And we’re still waiting for Nissan to to return hybrids to the United States. And they have confirmed that they are mainly through their e- power technology, which is a series uh series sort of hybrid where the engine only acts as a generator. But what I have for you guys today is another hybrid, a plug-in hybrid that they are borrowing from Mitsubishi and they’re rebadging, giving a slight Nissan splash and sprinkling on the Outlander plug-in hybrid and is going to be available through Nissan dealers. And in today’s video, I’m going to tell you how this compares to the Outlander plug-in hybrid. Um, and more importantly, how does it stack up against the Toyota RAV 4 plug-in hybrid that has just been improved for 2026? Guys, if you’re excited for Nissan to finally bring some plug-in hybrid and hybrid technology to their lineup, make sure to smash the like button and let’s get into it. Let’s compare the front ends of these two models. Okay, the obviously it’s a very, very, very, very close rebadge here. Um, Nissan though looks pretty good. I think I like it better than the Outlander. That’s just personal opinion though. Uh, it obviously it’s just like uh someone customized their Mitsubishi Outlander. That’s what it looks like on the top. All right. So, we do have additional. It looks like ambient lighting. I don’t believe it is. This is just kind of like this unique cascading garnish. We see this garnish on uh the new Pathfinder. The Pathfinder was just refreshed and had similar garnishes inside the grill. The boomerangs down below I’ve never enjoyed on the Outlander on this generation. It is still a bit awkward looking to me. Too much chrome, too much shininess. I like how it’s all painted here. It’s black on the top to match the grill and it’s red on the bottom to match the bumper. The bumper’s also been completely blacked out here on this trim level. It looks quite good. There are two trim levels here on the Outlander, uh, sorry, should I say the Nissan Rogue plug-in hybrid. Okay. Um, obviously the Nissan badge in place of the Mitsubishi badge, but there’s no denying that this is underneath made by Mitsubishi, and that’s okay. This is what Nissan needs to do to have a hybrid right here, right now. Now, uh, let’s keep moving. All right, side profile to side profile. Uh, the wheels here are definitely different for the Nissan seemingly. Um, obviously they’re all black, but they look like a completely different wheel design. At least from first to look. Man, it does look the Nissan looks better. And even the roof rails are blacked out here. Uh, this is kind of what I was was wishing Mitsubishi would do with this Outlander in terms of styling. Looks like Nissan beat them to it. Now, looking at the back here, uh Nissan also, I don’t know if it looks better, but they’ve gone more of the the light bar treatment, but it’s not full light bar. Uh they they don’t have the Nissan logo in the back. They have the word font. Um and they also have Rogue plug-in hybrid on the back right here. Um you can see the platinum trim. I think it’s SL and platinum are the two trim levels. All right, we have um a red uh little shark fin antenna. Um, but yeah, very similar. I mean, the the rear tail lights are identical. As you said, Nissan put this little plastic bezel in the middle um to make it a little bit more unique for the Nissan. Obviously, the bottom bezel is also blacked out. You know, these fake exhaust tips look better on the Nissan than they do on the Mitsubishi. So well done Nissan making the Mitsubishi Outlander look better and fixing the biggest issue I had with it, which was these boomerangs that were just shiny shiny reflective chrome pieces. Looks a lot better. Now, let’s get on the inside. I want to see if there’s any major differences. This looks very familiar to me. Now, I have this image. I think this is the updated Outlander, but I haven’t personally seen the the refreshed Outlander plug-in hybrid in person. What we have on the Nissan seemingly is the older interior. If this is the new interior down here at the bottom, the steering wheel looks to be exactly the same. The mid is exactly the same. The screen is just a little bit different. We have a smaller screen here with rotary dials, which is great for volume knob. The volume knob is actually in a better place here on the Nissan than it is a Mitsubishi. Um, we also have these uh buttons here, more buttons on top than we do on the Mitsubishi down below. And we still have the exact same climate control system down below as we do on um the Nissan. Don’t really care one way or the other. Yes. Would I love to have this tan interior? Of course, but this is pretty good, too. And you can see the Nissan seat design is a little bit different. the quilting here. There’s more tightness to the pattern compared to the Mitsubishi down below. All right, so that’s all the pictures I have for the Mitsubishi. Uh, so let’s just go over what we have here for the Rogue real quick. Uh, panel roof, top down 360 camera. Um, looks good. Looks good from the side. I’ve always thought the Outlanders look look good from the side into the back. So, uh, Nissa Nissan under under the hood. Is that really Nissan? No, it’s the the Mitsubishi little four-cylinder. Um, we got the ro the Rogue uh door sills here. Um, here’s your plugin. I wonder I’m trying to think here on the right hand side. Wow, it’s a dummy. On the right hand side, that’s where they have on other markets their Chadamo charging. Um, if you want to see me messing with Chadimo in Japan a couple weeks ago on the Nissan Sakura, go ahead and check out that video. But this looks like it just has a uh a J1772 for level one and level two charging. No DC fast charging here. Uh which is interesting because the um RAV 4 plug-in hybrid does offer on some of the plug-in hybrid trims uh DC fast charging. Here the new new wheel design uh looks good. Looks blacked out. Looks looks decent. Again, a different picture of the interior looks really nice. I don’t know what other interior colors we have, but we’ll read through the press release here in a little bit while I play you B-roll. Okay, here’s a, you know, you get some different animations to the driving modes. That’s about it. You know, it is a three row. It is a sevenseater just like the Outlander is, which is great because it just adds some a little bit more flexibility for Nissan’s portfolio. And this vehicle is based off the Rogue. Keep that in mind. It uses the same platform as the Rogue. Um, even though it it’s quite fitting actually now that I’m thinking about it, the Outlander this generation is based off the Rogues platform. I think it’s fitting that’s come full circle that the best Rogue technically has been the Outlander plug-in hybrid and it’s finally being available in Nissan’s lineup. All right, so I’m going to play some B-roll for you guys while I read through the press release. We have 38 mi of all electric range um, and 420 mi of total range. Now, to put that in perspective, uh the RAV 4 plug-in hybrid has up to 52 miles of electric range. Um, and total range, let me look. It doesn’t look like Toyota publicizes the total range of the RAV 4 plug-in hybrid. I would say it should be able to hit 500 miles pretty easily. We have 248 horsepower and 332 pound- feet of torque. Keep in mind that’s really between the two electric motors, the front and the rear. Um the the gasoline engine doesn’t really help a whole lot to the hybrids uh propulsion. Okay. So you get the full fat 248 horsepower if you have battery charge. Okay. And 33 332 pound- feet of torque. So it’s a dual motor. There’s a motor in the front, a motor in the back. Um, and the gasoline engine mainly works as a generator as well, but it can clutch into the wheels. So, it’s kind of like more like a Honda hybrid, but with plug-in hybrid range. Okay. Um, so 248 horsepower. What does a RAV 4 have? Well, the RAV 4 has 326 horsepower now in the plug-in hybrid, but that’s when the gasoline engine uh clutches in. I would say electric horsepower to electric horsepower is very close between the RAV 4 plug-in hybrid and the Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid/ Nissan Rogue plug-in hybrid. Um the benefit to Toyota though is that in hybrid mode it in my testing it is far superior Toyota’s system. Um it is far more efficient. I was getting like 25 miles per gallon the last time I tested an Outlander plug-in hybrid when I ran out of plug-in range. On on like a plug-in hybrid uh RAV 4, you’ll get close to 40 miles a gallon when you run out of plug-in range. Okay. Um now, Mitsubishi’s all-wheel drive system is vastly superior to Toyota’s all-wheel drive system. Uh so keep that in mind if you plan on off-roading the this plug-in hybrid. It will beat the Toyota. Uh the 26 Rogue plug-in hybrid will make its debut at the LA Auto Show November 21st through 30th. So if you guys want to see it in person uh and spend some time with it, you can do that in LA shortly. It will reach dealerships early 2026. All right, so a little bit more information on the plug-in hybrid system. Uh has a 20 kWh battery. The new Rav 4 is a 22.7 kWh battery. Um, and there is a small 2.4 liter gasoline engine. Uh, the the 20 kWh battery can be charged in just seven and a half hours on a level two. There’s also an available head-up display on this model. Uh, let’s see here. You can get the Bose 9- speakeraker audio, too. Platinum grade also features 120 volt 1500 watt power outlets, one in the trunk and one in the rear seats. That’s awesome to to be able to use this kind of as a mobile generator as well. um three rows of seating. Let’s see here. Cargo capacity behind the third row is almost 13 cubic feet, but if you fold down the third row, it’s about 31 cubic feet, which is quite a bit. Um and then you can also fold down the second row to get 65 cubic feet of space. Uh the rear doors open 70°. Uh the 360 camera is standard on the SL grade. Uh so of course you get it on the platinum grade as well. It looks like the wheels are going to be um the same between the two trim levels, the 20-in dark black wheels that we saw. Um also also acoustic glass is standard on the front doors to keep the things quiet. Um and on the platinum grade you get leather appointed seats, door illumination, and a machine aluminum trim plate around the shifter. Heated seats are standard. Heated steering wheel is standard on the SL grade. Um, the car, the Outlander also comes with a a level one charging cord as well. So, I’m going to look at some of the specs here, and I’ll I’ll stop playing the B-roll so you guys can nerd out with me. All right, this 2 and a half, what’s crazy? This 2 and 1/2 L, well, it’s a 2.4 L, only produces 131 horsepower. Uh, let’s see here. Takes regular. Here’s the front motor and rear motor here, which this gives you the combined exactly combined 248 horsepower. Um, and the the torque uh lines up exactly as well. Okay, the 332. Uh, so there is a 3 and 12 kilowatt on uh onboard charger, which is pretty slow for a plug-in hybrid. Um, I would expect the standard nowadays to be like 7 kilowatts. Uh, so you could cut this charging time to half to half. All right? Meaning, um, it they do cut it in half going from level one to level two, but level two has tons of different levels of charging. All right? All the way up to like almost 20 kilowatts in some cases. Okay. So, this 3 and 1/2 kilowatt charging rate, it’s a bit disappointing. Um, and because it charges just very slow for a level two, it should be twice. It should be 7 kW in my opinion. All right. To get this down to about three 3 to four hours of charging speed, but if you’re just charging overnight, I get it. However, it’s about what what do we talk about range here? It’s 38 miles. Let me just double check. Yeah, 38 miles of range. So, you could burn up through that pretty quickly and you can’t recharge the battery all that quickly as unfortunately. Okay. So, independent struts up front, multilink in the back, of course. Tire repair kit. Is there no spare tire? Uh, let’s see here. Let me just double check. It doesn’t look like there’s a spare tire. SL and Platinum have a tire repair kit. That could be a dealbreaker for a lot of you. So, I just wanted to let you guys know that the tire repair kit is there. I think the the RAV 4 has a they have a a spare tire on the hybrid and plug-in hybrid. So, auto dimming mirrors. This is a big deal if you’re going to be driving at night. Uh the rearview mirror is auto dimming on the Platinum. Uh but it is manual dimming on the SL model. Side mirrors, no mention of uh auto dimming side mirrors, which is which is a bummer. Here’s some more metrics if you want to see that. Uh curb weight is 46 to 4700 lb. Um if you’re curious in comparison and the RAV 4 is 40 about 4400 to 50 4500 lb. So the Mitsubishi here got 100 to 200 lb maybe 300 lb in some cases weight over the RAV 4 plug-in hybrid despite it having a smaller battery pack, less range, less power overall. It’s a heavier vehicle. All right, we’re going to look for deals right now on the Outlander plug-in hybrid uh because well, we don’t have pricing on this car yet. It’s it’s not available till 2026 sometime. So, we’re going to look at um availability. Outlander plug-in hybrid only 27 in my area. Uh and we’re seeing massive price drops on this thing. 36K. Let me see the lowest price for the SE trim. Um if they do they even make the SE trim. Here’s an a leftover 23 model. That’s a possibility that it could be a leftover 23 model out there. If we look at the 25 model here on the SE model, I don’t know why it says ES, uh about 35 36K. That’s the best you’re going to be able to buy this uh new Rogue plug-in hybrid for. Um keep in mind that this trim level here is lower than what the SL is on the on the Nissan end. Okay. So, the the trim levels, let me see here. The trim level, the seal would be more like the SL for for Nissan, I think. And then the SL seal platinum would be more like the platinum for Nissan. Um, so these things are going to be expensive. They’re going to start uh probably 45K. Um, and they’re going to have to be discount. Look, you’re seeing 0% financing on these things. Okay? So, it it’s a good car. It’s Mitsubishi’s best car and it’s great that Nissan is getting their hand in on it. And they’re coming out with a better looking version of it, which I think helps. Um, but you know, the the blacked out just looks so much better here. This blacked out trim here. And you can see that these look like the exact wheels that the Nissan has. That’s fascinating. I’m going to click on this one. Yeah, these are the wheels that the Nissan has. If all Outlanders had the blacked out treatment like this, you know, they look pretty good. But Nissan’s taking it to them for that. Let’s see if there’s any RAV 4 plug-in hybrids in my 12. Uh, as we get ready for the new model, these things are expensive. So, here here’s the thing. Um, yes, we don’t we don’t have the new ones out quite yet, but you can get a better equipped plug-in hybrid from Nissan or Mitsubishi through the Rogue or the Outlander plug-in hybrids for uh for less money, but you don’t get the same range. You don’t get the same charging rates. Um, you don’t get the same overall power output. And when you’re out of electric range, you don’t have anywhere close to the same efficiency. All right? At least in my testing, everyone’s testing is going to be a little bit different. All right. And just using a little Google search here that confirms what I saw when driving it. I couldn’t get much better than 25 miles per gallon driving in city uh in hybrid mode. Okay. So, it is not not very efficient at all in hybrid mode. Keep in mind, this is not this is not like what Nissan’s like end goal is for plug-in hybrids. This is a a stop gap, a band-aid for not having a plug-in hybrid on the market right now in their lineup, at least in the United States. They have e- power elsewhere. Well, e- power is already e- power is um a series hybrid, similar to this uh Outlander plug-in hybrid, except way smaller battery, so it’s a lot more efficient. All right. Um so, e- power is coming. Um, and it it won’t have a huge battery that you you have to charge. Um, and it will be probably as efficient, I would say, as Honda’s hybrids. Um, so we’re looking at, you know, around 40 m per gallon in town while offering around 200 horsepower. Um, so it’ll be very competitive to to Honda’s hybrids and similar in in operation. Super smooth. Um, and what I noticed, if you want to see what e- power is like to drive, even though it was an old e- power technology, second gen, at the end of October when I was in Japan, I went to Nissan’s headquarters in Yokohama. And um, I drove a Nissan No Aara, which has the second gen e- power on it, and it was incredibly smooth. Very, very smooth. Fun to drive because it was the Nismo version of that car. Um, and it didn’t have a lot of power to it, but we’re not getting that underpowered version of eup power, but it is very, very satisfying in town. Really perky, lots of torque. It just zips real quick um from a stop, but also it’s really responsive once you’re up to speed as well. Something that Honda hybrids struggle with a bit. and Nissan, you know, this vehicle is also not going to benefit from an EV tax credit like the Outlander plug-in hybrid has been doing. Despite that, this the Outlander plug-in hybrid still didn’t sell well. It was just very expensive for a Mitsubishi. Nissan can command a little bit more of a higher price tag. So, the the Outlander could be more successful as a Nissan badge product. Not only does it look better, but people have more access to Nissan dealers than they do Mitsubishi dealers. And it won’t be hard for Nissan to take their new e- power and put a bigger battery pack with it to give it a very efficient plug-in hybrid. Will it have as good as all-wheel drive control as Mitsubishi? Maybe. Maybe if Mitsubishi and Nissan are like, “Hey, let’s stop developing hybrids independently of each other and let’s develop the new plug-in hybrid system together.” Um, with e- power as its heart, uh, Nissan’s hybrid technology at its heart instead of Mitsubishi’s. That would make sense to me, but I never know what these manufacturers are going to do. They seem to do things the hard way more times than not. welcome Nissan’s hybrid back into the lineup. Potentially for the first time since the Morano in 2016. Again, this is not the mass market, more affordable hybrid that we’re look we were we’ve been looking for in the e- power that’s coming late 2026. But again, this vehicle is a stop gap. It’s a unique vehicle. Has three rows of seats. It is it’s better than nothing. I think you guys would agree. And it looks good. All right. I really This is Mitsubishi’s best vehicle and they’re giving it to Nissan. So, that’s a good thing. It’s a It’s a win for Nissan here in my opinion. And the problem is it’s just this is a niche market. Plug-in hybrids. Crossovers are few and far between. And we know that the RAV 4 is the king of this segment. Now, there are uh there are Korean plug-in hybrids as well. They don’t come they’re not quite as good in my opinion. The like the Kia and Hyundai plug-in hybrids, they’re not as good as this plug-in hybrid. The Outlander plug-in hybrid is certainly not as good as a Rav 4 hybrid. So, this is this is an alternative to a RAV 4 hybrid that has a third row seat, which might come in handy for a lot of people, and you should be able to get it for less money. It should command less money at the dealer. Maybe not MSRP. MSRP will be a little bit lower, I think, in some cases compared to a RAV 4 plug-in hybrid, but absolutely out the door prices will be a bargain compared to the RAV 4, I believe. Here’s a problem. Okay. I don’t think Nissan’s going to stock a lot of these. They know Mitsubishi’s struggling to sell them as it is. Okay. And them being rebagged as a Nissan isn’t going to move the needle a lot for that really niche segment. So, it’s going to be a a very small volume seller. Um, and we’re still waiting. We’ll just have to wait. This is kind of a band-aid, a stop gap until we get Nissan’s e- power third gen on the Rogue maybe kicks uh shortly, hopefully shortly after we get on the Rogue, but it needs to get here on the Rogue ASAP. We’re probably about a year out at this point. Okay, but hey, I’ll see you guys in the comments. I got to shut it down. Stay tuned for more uh coverage coming out of the LA Auto Show. This is just the first um uh preview of many. I again, I won’t be going this year. I’m at this time of year I’d rather stay home with the family. I think you guys would understand, especially with me being gone um to from from the family in Japan last month. Anyways, if you want to say hello to Strider, he’s well or I’m going the wrong way. There he is looking cute. Come here, Bubba. Come here. Good boy. All right, if you guys haven’t hit the like button, you know, do it for the dog at least. All right, good boy, cutie. All right, I’ll see you guys
#nissan #phev #rogue #outlander #rav4 #hybrid
Here’s everything you need to know about Nissan’s return to hybrid in America.
2026 Nissan Rogue Plug-in Hybrid: The convenience of electric,
the confidence of gas
• Nissan’s first U.S. plug-in hybrid delivers an EPA-estimated 38 miles of allelectric driving range, 420 miles total range1
• Three-row, seven-passenger seating offers flexibility for families
• Responsive powertrain delivers 248 horsepower and 332 lb-ft of torque for
powerful acceleration
• Standard Intelligent All-Wheel Drive2 and seven drive modes deliver
confidence for varied driving situations
• Rogue Plug-in Hybrid is a key contributor to a more electrified, renewed
product lineup as part of the Re:Nissan business plan
